Not a bad day in the park.  I’m trying to maintain my two-activations per week tempo, so any chance for a Friday feels like a bonus.  I had work meetings scheduled into the afternoon but by 0800, they started to cancel and by 1000 they’d all dropped off my Outlook calendar.  Every time a meeting’s canceled, an angle get’s his wings.

So, I quickly changed from my work clothes of shorts, T-shirt, and tenny shoes to my POTA outfit of … shorts, T-shirt and tenny shoes and hit the road.  I’ve been chipping away at a Kilo for Ike’s House.  With 10-20 QSOs per activation, I have a long way to go. Still, I’ve really come to appreciate the quickie activation – about 30 minutes to pitch and strike my camp with 30 minutes in the middle on the air.  It seems to keep folks happy at home and that happiness (or tolerance) is what makes my POTA possible.

I’ve struggle with what I think is propagation the last few times out, finding myself pushing CW at 50 or 60 watts, so I decided to use my 40-10 EFHW wire.  Plus, the sloper seems a little quieter than the vertical to me and I wanted an edge in digging out the weaker stations.

From the pavilion at Ike’s place, I choose from two trees; one right next to the pavilion that’s great for a 30ft wire and a bigger, taller one about 80 feet away.  Needing a good 70 feet to facilitate the 40-10, I opted for the farther. 

It took me four throws to snag a decent branch. I mean, it must have looked like a sketch comedy – an old, short, fat man slinging a weighted line only to have it go straight up, miss, then come straight back down.  Employees are waking by waving politely while I hop around to avoid getting donked on the head by my own throw weight.  But I got’er up there, not the limb I wanted, but good enough.  We hams moan about “compromise antennas” but nearly 300 POTA activations tell me, you mostly get what the day gives.

Loadout:

• FT-891
• Bioeno 20Ah LiPo battery
• 40-10 EFHW and Sparkplug unun
• BaMaKey TP-III Paddles

Activation:

At the table in the shade of the pavilion, I found some quiet air, called QRL? a few times, spotted with Ham2K POLO, and called CQ on 14044.5 KHz with 40w.  WB0RLJ, Jim Vaughn in US-5657 Standing Bear Lake, was first to come back. 

About the Sparkplug unun – This is a great little antenna tool; gives me about 1:1.5 SWR with the unun on the ground.  They offer two 49:1 transformers and are a little ambiguous about the power limit ratings so I call them big and little. I use the “Little” for CW 40w and below and the big for CW 50w and above.  CW can really heat a radio and a transformer.  Having “cooked” the capacitor on more than one unun, I’m cautious.  My recorded CQ message runs about 14 seconds and on beacon, there’s just a 4-second pause between messages.  Even by hand, my radio transmits continuous wave far more than it rests in receive.

I found propagation a little iffy.  Not enough fading to really call it QSB, but just lonely.  Not many quiet stations – contacts either came in strong and solid or were the faintest, maybe imaginary, teet-teet whispers in that dusty place just beneath the noise floor.

It’s funny how my mind now hears the tinkles of weak station Morse code in most every white noise.  I hear it in the hum of the fan at night and blended in with the sound of the microwave.  I also enjoy some significant tinnitus and imaginary weak stations will flutter in and out of that warbling whine constantly playing in my background. My life has a soundtrack.

All told the activation went well, not a raucous bull rush of piled up hunters, but steady.  I logged as I went and POLO says 21 QSOs in 33 minutes. The app’s timer doesn’t pause when I do, so things feel a little faster to me than they do to the app.

Looking back, this was a great day. The park was quiet, the SWR was low, the weather tolerable, my copy was working, and the hunters were patient.

As Always,

TNX ES 73
KA5TXN
DitWit